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31 January 2017

Watch: Ken Clarke’s blistering anti-Brexit speech in the Article 50 debate

The Tory MP and former Chancellor condemns Theresa May’s “Alice in Wonderland” plan, and calls his party “anti-immigrant”.

By Media Mole

During the Commons debate on triggering Article 50, everyone’s favourite furious europhile Ken Clarke laid into the government and his own party.

Video: The Mirror

He compared his party’s leadership to the politics of Enoch Powell, a former Tory politician known for his anti-immigrant “Rivers of Blood” speech:

“If he was here he would probably find it amazing to believe that his party had become eurosceptic and rather mildly anti-immigrant in a very strange way in 2016. I’m afraid on that I haven’t followed them. And I don’t intend to do so.”

He also condemned the Prime Minister’s Brexit plan by suggesting to the House that Theresa May is living in some kind of “Alice in Wonderland” type impossible scenario:

“Apparently you follow the rabbit down the hole and emerge in a Wonderland where suddenly countries throughout the world are queuing up to give us trading advantages and access to their markets that previously we’ve never been able to achieve. Nice men like President Trump and President Erdogan are just impatient to abandon their normal protectionism and give us access . . . No doubt somewhere there’s a hatter holding a tea party with a dormouse!”

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